hms iron duke

Wednesday, 27 December 2017

“The “Ethics and Empire” project asks the wrong questions,
using the wrong terms, and for the wrong purposes. However seriously intended,
far from offering greater nuance and complexity, Biggar’s approach is too polemical
and simplistic to be taken seriously”.

Alphen,
Netherlands. 27 December. Whatever happened to academic rigour and the
disciplined professionalism to consider historical evidence from many angles?

On the face
it the argument between Professor Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor of Moral and
Pastoral Theology and some of my fellow Oxford historians over the frame of
reference for the study of the British Empire is a storm in a Queen’s Lane
Coffee House tea-cup.In an article that
appeared in The Times newspaper Biggar,
according to his critics, had the temerity to suggest that the British Empire
was not all bad. By way of response a host of Oxford historians penned an open
letter of complaint in which they imply Biggar is a right-wing racist bigot for
even suggesting such heresy. This is an important argument that is not only
deeply political, but goes to the very core of why we study history, and the
danger posed by the growing intolerance of the academic political Left.

The attack on
Biggar presents itself as being apolitical. It is anything but. Rather, it is
yet another example of an attempt by the political Left to dominate British
university discourse and to prevent dissent through public intimidation.By publishing an open letter in The Conversation attacking Professor
Biggar and his course Ethics and Empire
the aim of these ‘historians’ is clearly to whip up another of those ‘snowflake’
storms of outrage which have become all the rage amongst left-wing
academics.

The key political
phrase in the letter is this: “For many of us, and
more importantly for our students, they also reinforce a pervasive sense that contemporary inequalities in access to and experience at our university are
underpinned by a complacent, even celebratory, attitude towards its [Britain’s]
imperial past”. The basic
premise here is that because the British Empire was intrinsically evil Britain
must bear guilt and because Britain must bear guilt it forfeits the right to a
national interest. Britain must thus atone for its past ‘evils’ by using what
power it has to support others, even if that is at the expense of itself and
its own people. The key phrase is “…our students”. By that they certainly do
not mean the whole student body but simply those activist students who share
their dogmatic, leftist views? What pretentious, pompous twaddle.

The letter goes on, “Good and evil may be meaningful terms of analysis
for theologians. They are useless to historians”.And yet ‘good’ and evil’ as a basis for
understanding the British Empire is precisely what these ‘historians’ are
trying to impose on the rest of us.In
fact, Biggar takes a morally neutral position in his work precisely to enable
a more nuanced study of the British Empire, who and why it was created and how
it evolved over some four hundred years. By attacking Biggar in the manner and tone
they adopt his detractors simply reveal themselves to be politically-motivated
and intolerant and consequently fail as Oxford historians.Worse, by applying their own left-wing framework
of political reference to the actions of people over four hundred years they negate
of the very art of the historian by imposing their values on past actions.As a result, they reduce the moral and
ethical narrative of the entirety of the British Empire to a ‘simple’ and
absurd equation; the abolition of slavery by the second Empire versus the
Amritsar massacre and the Tasmanian genocide, both of which were terrible
events, one of which was ordered by a very poor general and which was deemed
appalling even by the standards of his day.

The letter also states that, “Biggar sets up a caricature in place of an
antagonist: an allegedly prevailing orthodoxy that “imperialism is wicked”. His
project’s declared aim is to uncover a more complex reality, whose “positive
aspects” dispassionate scholarship can reveal. This is nonsense. No historian
(or, as far as we know, any cultural critic or postcolonial theorist) argues
simply that imperialism was “wicked””. And yet the letter clearly implies that for
the letter’s authors the British Empire was utterly wicked.

The letter goes on, “We welcome continued, open, critical engagement in
the ongoing reassessment of the histories of empire and their legacies both in
Britain and elsewhere in the world. We have never believed it is sufficient to
dismiss imperialism as simply “wicked”. Nor do we believe it can or should be
rehabilitated because some of it was “good””. Really? There is no evidence I
can see from Professor Biggar’s work that he is endeavouring to ‘rehabilitate’
the British Empire, nor is it the role of the professional historian or
theologian to ‘rehabilitate’ anyone or anything.

Why does this
dispute matter? The politicisation of history in British universities is more
than an academic dispute. It is about political power and the very purpose of
universities. Some Oxford historians go on to enjoy glittering careers in
politics and the civil service. If their world-view is shaped by those who
believe contemporary British policy should be shackled by guilt Britain will
decline even further and even faster than it is now. As for the purpose of
British universities the danger exists that they will simply espouse a
political mono-culture, much like Russian universities from Lenin to Putin.

What are the
implications of such political intolerance? A couple of weeks ago I was
contacted by a leading academic in a top department at a well-respected British
university who invited me to apply for a professorial chair.As you might expect I was honoured but after
due consideration decided not to apply.Now, many of you who read my scribblings know I am no snowflake.Indeed, I like and welcome robust
debate.Moreover, I do not characterize
myself as either a progressive or a conservative, but rather both.
Unfortunately, British universities are no longer places where such debate can
take place and the academics who scribed the letter simply demonstrate the
intolerant refusal to debate that so concerns me. Worse, some British
universities are beginning to take on the appearance of state-funded
‘re-education camps’ in which people who do not conform to a political
mono-culture are shouted down by the self-important and self-righteous.If people of my robustness are
being deterred from applying for posts, I can assure you that many others are
also so deterred.

Why is an open-minded
study of the British Empire important?Many years ago I was invited to lunch in New Delhi. Present at the lunch
was a mix of British and Indian officials and academics.The British (yours truly accepted),
determined to uphold the longest apology in history and which is doing so much
to suck the life out of Britain’s contemporary strategic mojo, were in full
‘don’t mention the Raj accept to say sorry’ mode.My line was provocatively different.India, I said, is an emerging Great Power,
Britain is still a power to be reckoned with and there is much we can and
should do together.After several bouts
of British official tut-tutting an old Indian lady suddenly averred, “You know
things were better here when the British were in charge, but it was right the
British left”.

The British
Empire was of its age, and over four hundred years it did a lot of good and a
lot of bad when viewed through a contemporary lens. When it was over it was
right that it was over.Indeed, as a
contemporary Oxford historian my historically-informed political view is that
people should always aspire to the freedom to screw up their own
countries.Here, Britain is again
leading the world.

The study of
history will always be to an extent political, and there have been
well-documented contentions between Oxford historians for centuries that attest
to the politics of historical study. However, it is, at best, poor tradecraft
to apply the political values of one dogmatic group today to the actions of
another group centuries ago. Yes, the study of history must also always be
challenging.At the same time the study
of history must always, by definition, seek balance, because a lack of balance
leads to the over-politicisation of history and results in abominations, such
as Holocaust denial.Indeed, the problem
of politicised history is not solely one of the political Left. The political Right
also poses a threat to the study of history by too often championing and
exaggerating the supposed actions of the past to maintain historical myths that
in turn enable nostalgia as the basis for policy.Both are wrong and Biggar, it seems to me, is
right to challenge both camps to put down the mega-phones and again embrace
respectful debate.

It is also a
privilege to be a professional Oxford historian. If they do nothing else this
group of dons and fellows should aspire to be the guardians of historiography
and the art and craft of the professional historian. At the very least that means up-putting with research and topics for research they might find objectionable, if the methodology is sound. Rather, the tone and substance of
the attack on Professor Biggar reveals a group of Oxford historians have not
only lost balance in seeking to impose a contemporary political agenda on the
study of history, they have also failed in their duty as professional Oxford
historians and let down their students.

The joy of
being a historian is the search for evidence and the debate it engenders. The
discipline of the historian is to suppress one’s own prejudices in an attempt
to understand the ‘then’ contemporaneous relationship between cause and
effect.Discipline, open-mindedness and
tolerance are thus vital because history is always essentially political
because so much of it is about power. However, what really saddens me about
this latest bout tale of academic mud-slinging is the questionable quality of some
of the people at my own university who purport to be professional Oxford historians.

The British
Empire lasted a very long time and was subject to many motivations, changes and
events. There were also, in effect, two British empires. The first empire was
indeed acquisitive and rapacious and began with the arrival of English in India
in 1583 and English and Scottish settlers in North America in 1607, and ended
with the American Revolution in 1776.The second empire was constructed after 1815 and Britain’s victory in
the Napoleonic Wars, the establishment of British Crown Rule in India in 1858, and
was then ‘de-constructed’ (to use academic speak) between 1947 and the late 1960s,
with some remnants still extant.The
difference between the two empires was enormous mainly because Britain itself
changed and evolved. Thus, the British empires are very much worthy of study,
and very much worthy of study through a moral and ethical lens, and it thus
very hard to see how such a ‘project’ can ask the
wrong questions, using the wrong terms, and for the wrong purposes.

Ultimately, the
study of history is about the simple search for ‘truth’ via evidence and respectful
debate designed to hone the focus of analysis on events, their causes and
consequences.Ironically, Biggar, who is
not an historian, is reminding some Oxford historians that the study of history
should first and foremost be conducted without fear or favour.

Press on,
Professor Biggar. Ignore this bout of politically-motivated bullying and
remember, not all Oxford historians are against you.

Monday, 18 December 2017

“After visits from the Ghosts of Christmas Past and
Present, Scrooge most fears the visit of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
When he sees what this spirit has to show him, Scrooge begs to know whether the
course of events can be changed: "Men's courses will foreshadow certain
ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But
if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what
you show me!"

Charles Dickens, “A
Christmas Carol”

Alphen,
Netherlands. 18 December.It must be
Christmas!The Brexit Twitter Fairies
are about. This week I have been assailed for daring to suggest that last week’s
European Council decision to proceed with PESCO doth not a European Army
make.One Twitter assailant went as far
as to suggest that ALL of Europe’s armed forces will soon be under the command
of the President of the European Commission.This is a Dickens of a vision; Jean-Claude Cognac’s addled finger on the
‘European’ nuclear button after a particularly bibulous Christmas breakfast. It
is enough to invoke the Ghost of Apocalypses Past, Present, and feared for
future.The problem with PESCO is that
it is now hopelessly entangled in Britain with Brexit (as is everything else
these days).Or, to put it another way,
the EU’s not-really Army is now tied up with Britain’s not-quite Brexit. You
see, Brexit at its extremes (which is all we tend to get) is now a
quintessential struggle between Hard Remoaners and their vision of an EU that
would afford perpetual prosperity but only if citizens willingly sacrifice
liberty and sovereignty, against Hard Brexiteers who promise unfettered British
sovereignty and liberty but only at the profound risk of national
prosperity.This explains the building
sense of betrayal amongst those who dreamed of HMS Britannia setting sail again into distant geopolitics
unfettered by Holy Brussels bulls and bureaucrats. So, after two weeks of
divorce and defence where is Britain and ‘Europe’? Let me try and disentangle
Brexit from PESCO in an attempt to make some sense of both.

Brexit

Hard
Remoaners and Hard Brexiteers are wrong. Britain is not really going to ‘leave’ the EU
as currently constituted, and will always to some extent orbit around the EU,
if for no other reason than that is how power works.This not-quite Brexit was admitted to this
week by none other than Chancellor Philip Hammond, the City of London’s
Anointed Representative on Earth, who suggested that a not-quite post-Brexit
‘transition period’ would last ‘at least’ two years. In other words, for ‘at
least’ two years Britain, as Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson suggested, would
be little more than a vassal state or colony of the EU, subject to its rules
but with no say over them.Thereafter?There is no such
thing as complete sovereignty in this world for any state that deems itself
part of the Western institutional system, even the mighty United States.

So, is a
not-quite Brexit even worth a McCawber (read your Dickens!)? Well, yes.
Remember the 1992 Maastricht Treaty (what eventually became the 1993 Treaty of
European Union)?Britain, after another
particularly rancorous domestic debate over ‘Europe’, eventually engineered an
opt-out from the so-called Social Chapter, and in so doing established a
political and legal precedent for British political and legal
exceptionalism.It is happening again as
so-called ‘convergers’ battle within Theresa May’s wonky Cabinet with so-called
‘divergers’.

In other
words, it is becoming increasingly clear that the aim of May’s Brexit is not
some political divorce decree absolute, but rather as a super opt out from a
possible future, more politically, economically and security-integrated
EU.In other words, the Brexit May is
offering is deeply unappealing to Hard Brexiteers when they look at today’s EU,
but inevitably Britain will diverge politically from an EU that could well go
to a political place Britain was never going to go.Indeed, it is the EU that in future will and
probably must diverge politically from the UK if its institutions are to be made
to work.

Last week’s
defeat of the British Government over the supremacy of Parliament hinted at this
future divergence and where the law of the land must ultimately reside.Enshrined at the heart of the EU is a
Richelieu-esque principle against which the English once fought a civil war and
the Americans fought a revolution; that distant, bureaucratic executive power over
which citizens have no direct say and which enshrined in hybrid treaties that
straddle domestic and international law are supreme over national democratic
institutions. Parliament has dimmed over
the years as it rubber-stamped itself out of supremacy by passing sovereignty
to Brussels. If sovereignty is to be repatriated it is Parliament, not the
Executive which must be supreme.

PESCO

PESCO, or
permanent structured co-operation, is some great leap forward on the road to a
United States of Europe, whatever Martin Schulz the deluded leader of Germany’s
SPD might claim.However, if properly funded
it could become an important step towards more effective and efficient European
armed forces, to which Britain’s still powerful armed forces will choose its
relationship.I say ‘powerful’,
Britain’s armed forces will soon cease to be so if Spreadsheet Philip ‘City’
Hammond and his mates at the Treasury continue to destroy Britain’s armed forces
in their hard-line ideological pursuit of sound money. Vladimir Hammond? The weaker militarily Britain chooses to become the stronger militarily Britain makes a weak Russia.

Yes, the
language of PESCO, with its hints of a sometime European Defence Union does
indeed smack at time of the federalist ambitions beloved of the Brussels Euro-Aristocracy.
Then again every single EU document since the 1950 European Coal and Steel
Community has included such Monnet-esque verbiage.In fact, in defence terms PESCO’s provisions
are surprisingly and dangerously modest.The real problem with PESCO is that it simply the Ghost of European
Defence Past re-packaged by people not very serious about defence.Yes, seventeen projects across a sweep of
mainly combat support services will help alleviate some desperately dangerous
lacunae in Europe’s military capabilities and capabilities. Yes, the idea of
national implementation plans are useful, although as with NATO’s Defence
Planning Process there is no enforcer to ensure compliance. Yes, the European
Defence Fund, the European Defence Industrial Development Programme and the
Athena Mechanism for financing common costs of EU military missions and
operations are to be welcomed.

However, the
level of strategic and political ambition implicit in PESCO simply does not
match the seriousness of the threat implicit and explicit in the 360 degree
security environment in which Europeans reside. To put PESCO in perspective at
€5bn per year until 2020, and then €500m per year thereafter, the European
Defence Fund would just about pay for one and a half new British aircraft
carriers. Indeed, perhaps the most important thing to come out of PESCO is the
agreement to create a ‘military Schengen’ to aid enhanced military mobility in
the event on an emergency. And, Dublin’s final and irrevocable, albeit backdoor
abandonment of any pretence that Ireland is a neutral country.

So, if I act
as a translator of EU-speak, a role for which I am particularly well-versed, what
PESCO really means in plain, Yorkshire English is thus:

Although at the 2014 NATO Wales Summit most of us signed up to spending
2% GDP on defence by 2024, of which 20% must be spent each year on new
equipment, we did not actually mean it.We did so because the Yanks were going through one of their
every-now-and-then tantrums about low European defence spending and the unfair
sharing of burdens. In any case we knew President Obama was already by then political
toast and it made David Cameron look ever so slightly in power as well as in
office.Many of us also no longer
believe there really is a world beyond the EU and therefore need not bother
with it, but still need the Yank taxpayer to defend us just in case President
Putin and his mates imbibe a bit too much Yuletide Stolichnaya. So, PESCO gives
us a get out of Wales free card by letting us pretend we are serious about defence
by restating that old roasted defence Christmas chestnut that we will do ever more
defending with ever less money, by also pretending we really are going to
integrate what is left of our armed forces.We then enshrine it one of those pre-Christmas, post-champagne EU
summits by giving an old lower case concept – permanent structured co-operation
– a new upper case acronym – PESCO. We then all drive home for Christmas having
convinced ourselves that words mean action and therefore must be true and we
open some Christmas crackers to find one of those terrible European jokes.When is defence not defence? When it has gone
all a-PESCO.

Brexit and
PESCO

Europe’s hard
defence reality will not be fixed by PESCO and must not be worsened by
Brexit.That reality is a stark one given
growing US global military over-stretch, the growing threats Europeans face,
and the fact that the UK provides 25% of all European defence investment, 30%
of all defence research technology, and 35% of all high-end deployable European
combat forces (the Royal Marines Mr Hammond?). Europe’s massive defence deficit
will only stand a chance of being closed if Britain continues to play a full
role in the defence of Europe and Europeans finally get really serious about
hard power and how to generate it.

In other
words, Europe needs more PESCO not less, and it poses no threat to NATO because
unless the US is going to replace the UK in the EU the Alliance will remain the
supreme purveyor of defence for Europe unless and until the Americans finally become
so fed up with free-riding Europeans they tell the Allies to take a strategic
hike.Then and only then could something
like PESCO become a precursor for some kind of European Army, and only if
Brussels really is the capital of a country called ‘Europe’. Why? Because a
European Army would need a European Government if it was ever to be used. Not
only is ‘Europe’ a very long way from creating such a country, read PESCO
properly (so few do) and it is clear that for the indefinite future Europe’s armed
forces will remain under the command of the member-states and the governments
and parliaments that rule them and most decidedly not the European Commission.

Europe’s
‘Army’, PESCO & Britain’s Super Opt-Out

Perhaps the
most sensible commentary I read this week came from my friend Ambassador
Stefano Stefanini, the former Italian Permanent Representative to NATO, and
Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, head of the Munich Security Conference and
former German Ambassador to the United States. In a piece last week that appeared in both La Stampa and on the website of the
Munich Security Conference, entitled “There
is More at Stake in Brexit than Trade”, the two ambassadors injected a note
of realism into the Brexit/PESCO debate.For both sides of the Channel a simple
reality check will make it obvious. Between 25 and 30% of overall EU military
capabilities fly the Union Jack: it is too little for the UK to stand alone; it
is too much for the EU to do without. In times of shifting geopolitics, growing
and multiple threats, and budget constraints, London should not delude itself
and Brussels should not be in denial. European security of course will continue
relying on NATO, with the UK's full participation, but there are and there will
be operations carried out by European forces only, for instance in Africa or in
the Mediterranean. London is hinting at supporting a credible European defence
structure and capabilities, as long as they do not amount to "vanity
fair". In exchange we believe that the UK should get a comprehensive and
generous offer from the EU to be associated with it, including access to the
European Defence Fund and to the EU Defence Industrial Development Programme.

So, Brexiteers, calm down there will be
no European Army, no Supreme Commander Cognac…and no European defence without
Britain. Remoaners? Buy a bloody atlas!

Wednesday, 13 December 2017

“…the
Alliance is a dynamic and vigorous organisation which is constantly adapting
itself to changing conditions. Given such changes people in NATO societies want
action/protection and not seeing it. It has also shown that its future tasks
can be handled within the terms of the Treaty [of Washington] by building on
the methods and procedures which have proved their value over many years”.

Report of the Council on the Future Tasks of
the Alliance, 13 December 1967

Alphen, Netherlands. 13 December. If the
Netherlands had a slope it would be sliding ‘slippererily’ down it! Right now I should be in Stockholm having addressed
a joint Atlantic Council-Konrad Adenauer
Stiftung event on security in the North Atlantic and Arctic. Instead, I was
trapped at home, KLM cancelled my flight, and the Netherlands declared ‘Code
Red” due to snow. My apologies to my friend Anna Wieslander at the Atlantic
Council. So, by way of very limited recompense
here are my remarks that in the end I made by Skype.

Fifty years
ago Pierre Harmel published his seminal report, “The Future Tasks of the Alliance”. The report was based on a
dual-track approach – sound defence and engaged dialogue – to deter the Soviet
Union whilst talking to it. Dealing with
Russia in the North Atlantic and the Arctic will require a similar approach, a new
Northern Dual Track. Indeed, because whilst Russia signals co-operation at
times, particularly in the Arctic, it is also developing military capabilities
which means if Moscow’s intent changes NATO allies and EU member-states in the
region could very quickly face an overtly hostile Russia. Credibly deterring Moscow from crossing such
a threshold must be our collective aim, and by so doing convince President
Putin of the mutual benefits of co-operation across the region.

My core
message is this; security in the Arctic sits perilously on the cusp between
co-operation, competition and conflict; between regimes and treaties and force
majeure; and between legitimacy and legalism and a Realpolitik sphere of influence.
EU and NATO together must develop sufficient hard power in the region to ensure
soft power prevails as the modus operandi
of co-operation with Russia.

Anna posed
four questions for this session which I will endeavour to answer:

1)What is at stake
in the North Atlantic and what should be our response in order to increase
security?

The keyword is
deterrence. I worry about Russian
ambitions on Norway’s North Cape because of what it would mean for the Russian Northern
Fleet to control it, and the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap. Therefore, with
the United States Navy (USN) stretched thin the world over ‘credible deterrence’
would mean an essentially European Naval Joint Expeditionary Force at least able
to match that of Russia.

2)How does Climate
Change affect security operations in the Arctic?

Moscow clearly
thinks a new Northern Sea Passage could open up shortening the sea route
between Europe and Asia by some 3000 nautical miles, with much of it along
Russia’s northern coast. Russia would naturally
seek to control that trade. However, even if some scientists suggest the Arctic
ice cap is melting far more quickly than envisaged many suggests it could still
be 30 years before such a route opens up.
In any case, there could, in time, be as many as four such routes across
the Pole.

Either way,
Russia seems to have ambitions to see much of the Arctic under its sphere of
influence which is why we must collectively resist such a goal. Specifically, the EU and NATO together must
ensure current relationships are locked into regimes, treaties and institutions
so that they remain the mechanisms for resolving what look like inevitable
future disputes over sea-lines of communications and natural resources.

3)Does it continue
to make sense to view the North Atlantic and Arctic as two separate areas?

In a sense the
EU and NATO are forced to as long as Russia is willing to co-operate in the
Arctic, but competes in the North Atlantic.
The real challenge for the Allies and Partners in the region will be to
get non-regional NATO and EU members to take the Russian threat in the ‘High
North’ seriously. Too many eastern
allies look east, southern allies look south, ne’er the twain ever meet, and
very few look north. The UK? God knows
where London looks these days. The real
question is what will the EU and NATO do if and when Russia tries to exert
unreasonable influence over either the Arctic or the North Atlantic, or both.

4)What are Russian
strategic concerns and perspectives?

-Political: Part of Moscow’s strategy is simply to
keep EU and NATO states politically and permanently off-balance and the on
strategic back-foot around its extensive periphery from Syria to Svalbard.

-Economic-domestic: Russia, dangerously to my mind,
too often sees Arctic resources as a ‘one shot’ chance to avoid much-needed
economic reforms, and as a ‘silver bullet’ to solve all of its economic
contradictions.

-Military-Operational: It is vital to
Moscow that the Northern Fleet can ingress and egress between North Cape and
Bear Island without detection or molestation the main fleet base at Severomorsk
and the secondary base at Kola and maintain the nuclear launch ‘bastion’ for
the one Typhoon-class SSBN currently operating there (Dmitriy Donskoy), the seven ageing Delta IV-class ‘boomers’ and the
one new Borei-class boat. There are more
Borei-class SSBN boats planned.

-Military-Strategic: It is also vital to Moscow that
the Northern Fleet bases can operate as springboards for offensive maritime-amphibious-land
ops across the Arctic, Baltic and North Atlantic regions to assert Russian
interests and claims, to intimidate and if needs be to seize.

To conclude, we
Europeans are very good at talking these days, but very poor at defending. Therefore,
NATO must re-kindle Harmel in the High North (Frozen Harmel?) and in conjunction
with the EU. To that end, it was encouraging to see some progress made this
week on enhancing the EU-NATO strategic partnership at the NATO Ministerial. Peace
through legitimate and realistic strength must be purposely allied to engaged
dialogue with Russia. Indeed, whilst we
must never stop talking, we must never stop defending.

Sunday, 10 December 2017

“There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children
and the United States of America”.

Otto von Bismarck

Alphen,
Netherlands. 10 December. Can the German-US
relationship ever be special? That was
the question that this interloping, Brexit-escaping Brit saw hanging in the
crisp Alpine air like new snow on a mountain fir in Germany’s beautiful
Garmisch-Partenkirchen. My purpose for
being in Germany was to attend a meeting of the Loisach Group. Set up this year, the Group is ‘co-hosted’ by the
excellent George C. Marshall Center and the Munich Security Conference. The aim
of this high-level working group is to explore those areas of grand (and
not-so-grand) strategy where Germany and the United States should co-operate
more fully in pursuit of peace and stability.
It is a timely and much needed initiative.

Now, I
suppose my first port of call should be to define the meaning of ‘special
relationship’. President Trump, in the way that President Trump does, put the
UK-US special relationship this way, “The special relationship between America
and the UK has been one of the great forces in history for justice and for
peace, and by the way, my mother was born in Scotland, Stornoway, which is
serious Scotland”. His essential point
is that for the past seventy or so years the US and UK working together have
been one of the “…great forces in history”.

The contemporary
West certainly needs a strong German-US strategic relationship and for it to be
a new force in history. Sadly, with the UK in a mess, and the British political
elite seemingly incapable of rising the challenges of the twenty-first century,
the two anchor states of the West are undoubtedly Germany and the United
States. Nor, as a Brit, am I particularly
concerned about the strategic eclipsing of Britain by Germany, were it the case.
My German friends can irritate the hell out of me, primarily because they have
a tendency to believe they are always right about everything all of the time,
even when they are plain wrong. Americans? Their collective and complete
refusal to properly understand the causes of Brexit being a case-in-point.

Equally, I am
equally irritated by those, particularly in my own country, who seek to equate contemporary
liberal democratic Germany with Nazi Germany simply because they resent
powerful Germany. As L.P. Hartley once
wrote, “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there”. In other words, the need for America and
Germany to lead, and preferably lead together, is just plain power-sense.

It is at that
point the complexities in the German-US relationship become apparent. Donald
Trump’s other point was that kinship does indeed play a role in the US-UK special
relationship. It is changing, and over
time will change, but whilst the US and UK are very different countries, with
the latter very much a European country, there are still powerful cultural ties
between the two that do not exist between Germany and the US.

Moreover, the
‘special’ bit in the special relationship has hitherto been founded on a level
of mutual trust and respect of such import that the most sensitive of material and
information continues to be shared between the US and UK (although whether that
trust survive a Jeremy Corbyn government in London is a moot point). It is this ‘automaticity’ of trust that is missing
in the German-US relationship. Indeed, I
would go as far as to say that the US and German establishments are profoundly
ambivalent about each other, and that such ambivalence goes far deeper than the
implicit animosity that characterises the Merkel-Trump non-relationship.

This is a
shame because as America’s over-stretched, world-wide reach grows relatively
weaker over time as China and other ‘super-regional powers’ rise to challenge Washington’s
writ the US will rely ever more on powerful allies and partners such as
Germany. And, with Britain leaving the EU (if one reads the small-print of this
week’s deal Britain really is leaving the EU) and with Berlin leading the way
to deeper European integration, Germany will inevitably become relatively more
powerful, and thus more vital to the US.

There is,
however, a very large caveat with my thesis – Germany and its attitude to the
utility and use of military power. As the
Loisach Group debated with Germans occupying
the 'high' ground of theory, whilst Americans seeking joint policy action, a few
hundred kilometres to the West a ceremony was taking place of profound
strategic and political significance.
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was commissioning the first of Britain’s
new 70,000 ton aircraft carrier’s HMS
Queen Elizabeth into the Royal Navy.

Now, being
rude about my country is a European habit these days because Brexit has dared
pose a question the Euro-Aristocracy regard as heretical and would rather not
have asked; who governs us? And, yes, one can nit-pick over the number of
aircraft Big Lizzie will operate etc.
etc. However, the simple truth is that
Britain will soon have two such ships that will greatly assist the United
States to maintain global military reach.
Germany does not have, nor will it have anything like such military power.

You see, for
all the bluster about the ‘special relationship’ over the decades, culture,
shared values, kinship et al, it was only ever REALLY special when Britain brought
significant additional military heft to America’s super-heft (are you listening
Mr Hammond?). Or, to put it another way, for all their challenges the British face
they are investing in the kind of military force projection the Americans see
as power vital to maintaining a special relationship, whilst the Germans, who
continue to see ‘power’ in very different and mainly civilian and institutional
ways, are not.

The subject for
the Group’s discussion was, Harmonizing German
and US Engagement with Russia. As I
sat through the various presentations I became ever more convinced the title of
the meeting should have been, Harmonizing
German and US Engagement with Each Other.
This is a vital mission because the German-US strategic partnership really
matters. However, the Americans see the centre of gravity of the relationship as
primarily helping them by better sharing burdens to offset their increasing military-strategic over-stretch, whilst
the Germans see it as part of a non-military grand bargain that would constrain, as much as reinforce American might. As long as that fundamental fissure
exists the best that will be said of the German-US strategic relationship is
that is essential, rather than special.

Still, the Loisach Group has a vital role to play
to strengthen what is for all my caveats a, if not the vital strategic transatlantic
relationship of the twenty-first century. For, to re-phrase Bismarck, in the twenty-first
century there is no longer a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards,
children, Germans, or even Americans.

Monday, 4 December 2017

“European militaries will need (at the very least) to undertake
three security and defence roles, possibly simultaneously. First, to deter Russia
and if needs be defend NATO and the EU from an armed Russian incursion. Second,
to help stabilise states and regions in chaos, which in turn threatens European
security. Third, to ensure and assure interoperability with the US future force”.

Report on the high-level conference The Future of European Militaries, Wilton Park, 25-27 September,
2017

Alphen,
Netherlands. 4 December. My reports are
rather liked the ill-famed urban legend about London busses of old. You wait for
ages for one and then four come along at the same time. For those of us schooled many years ago by waiting
in the bloody rain for the dreaded ‘216’ non-bus service this story is more
than legend. It is where soggy characters were formed and drenched backbones
stiffened. Indeed, there were times after a particularly long wait I wondered
if the bloody bus itself was mere legend.

First, my
thanks. The report emerges from a great
conference held at the Foreign and Commonwealth Agency Wilton Park deep in the
beautiful Sussex countryside between 25th and 27th
September. My dear friend, Wilton Park
Programme Director Dr Robert Grant and I had the pleasure of co-chairing the conference
with me acting as Scribbler-in-Chief or Rapporteur. My thanks go also to the
staff at Wilton Park who do such a fantastic job looking after the conference
delegates. My good friend Dr Holger Mey at Airbus, and Cdr Jeroen de Jonge at the
Dutch scientific research company TNO stumped up much of the sponsorship for
the conference, along with the UK Ministry of Defence (thank you chaps!), and
my old friend Dr Jeff Larsen at the NATO Defence College in Rome.

So, what,
after all the necessary formalities, did we actually conclude about the future
of European militaries, other than it would be a very good idea if they had a
future, and that said future was a together future? The conference focused on six themes: force
structure, threat and response, the implications of Brexit for European
security and defence, technology and future war, institutional and command
relationships, and the future of European militaries.

The
conference also endeavoured to answer pivotal questions that the leaders of
European states need to answer right now. What will be the centre of gravity of
European forces in the twenty-first century? Should a European future force be
focused on the warfighting high-end of the conflict spectrum, or the medium to
low end? What balance between force mass and force manoeuvre should European militaries
aspire to? Is there sufficient consensus among, and between Europeans to fashion
what would look like a European force credible across the conflict spectrum?

The
conference concluded that if those questions are to be answered positively then
European militaries will need to “embrace broad spectrum innovation” that
combines technologies, skills and knowledge into an affordable, but necessarily
radical future force concept”.

Key findings (inter alia) from the conference were:

·European defence planning must be able to satisfy national
requirements, enable pan-European cooperation, and ensure interoperability with
US, Canadian and other forces.

·Credible deterrence and defence rest on the twin pillars of military
capabilities and capacity.

·The European command and control (C2) structure needs to be
sufficiently robust to enable Europeans to be force providers, command European
operations, and organise European militaries into a far more coherent and
consistent force.

·No single European country can any longer afford complete
strategic autonomy.

·Smaller European states should be organised into EU and NATO compatible
groupings. PESCO can help with the development of such groupings.

·Procurement and acquisition must be re-established on new, common
and shared requirements that underpin national, EU and NATO defence industrial
policy.

·Acquisition and innovation cycles must be accelerated.

·NATO and the European Defence Agency (EDA) must harmonise their
respective efforts to operationalise innovation and to ensure security of
supply and re-supply.

·NATO and the EU must be far better able to talk to each other at
all levels, and during all stages of a crisis.

·The US needs to be clearer about the future strategic partnership it
seeks with its European allies.

·Europeans must better understand the role of force across the
conflict spectrum from hybrid war to cyber war to hyper war.

·NATO needs more forces throughout the command structure.

·Speed of recognition during a crisis is vital to understand when
an attack is an attack.

·The Allies should create an A2/AD bubble over the Baltic States.

To conclude, future war will demand a smart mass of forces able to
exert influence and effect across great distance very quickly, particularly as
new technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing massively
and irrevocably speed up the command pace of war. Therefore, given the threat
array Europe’s armed forces need to be bigger, stronger, and more agile,
smarter and with far more capability and capacity than they enjoy today. They
will also need to be allied more deeply to sharper intelligence-led indicators
that are better able to warn of pending danger.

Or, in other words, Europeans will need a combined future force
able to undertake at least one major joint operation and three smaller joint
operations. And, to create such a force in the current strategic, political, financial
and economic environment Europeans together need to act now.

Britain? Brexit or no the
British must be at the core of such efforts as the UK provides 30% of Europe’s
high-end military capability. The message? United we stand, or divided we fall.
One final thing – the conference concluded that there was a vital missing
ingredient in the goulash of European militaries: political leadership! Ho hum…

Alphen,
Netherlands. 1 December. What a week! On Monday I had the honour of being part
of a delegation presenting the new GLOBSEC
NATO Adaptation Report to NATO Deputy Secretary-General Goettemoeller in
Brussels. The next day I flew to Rome to attend a high-level conference on NATO
and nuclear deterrence at the NATO Defence College, and which was organised by
my friend Dr Jeff Larsen. Now? I am knackered.

First, NATO adaptation.
Fifty years on from the last great attempt to ‘adapt’ NATO with the 1967 Harmel
Report, and the Alliance adoption of the then new doctrine of Flexible Response (to replace Massive Retaliation) the new report
considers the future of the Alliance in the round. To that end, and for for some fifteen months past,
I have had the pleasure of being a member of, and lead writer for a steering committee
which included a former NATO Deputy Secretary-General, a former minister of
defence and chairman of the NATO Military Committee, a former ambassador to the
North Atlantic Council and former senior NATO commanders. Led by General John R. Allen of the US, the
Steering Committee comprised Admiral Giampaolo di Paola of Italy, General Wolf
Langheld of Germany, Ambassador Alexander Vershbow of the US, Ambassador Tomas
Valasek of Slovakia…and me of Sheffield, Yorkshire, ardent Sheffield United fan,
but apart from that no other claim to fame whatsoever.

The main
report One Alliance: The Future Tasks of the
Adapted Alliance has over fifty considered recommendations across thirteen
main domains that can be thus summarised: embrace new geostrategic and transatlantic
realities; further strengthen NATO’s deterrence and defence posture; re-establish
a high-level of NATO military ambition; strengthen NATO’s role in
counter-terrorism; engage with Russia and Ukraine on the basis of principle, promote
a broad NATO security agenda; craft a smarter NATO; create an ambitious and comprehensive NATO-EU Strategic Partnership; foster
wider strategic partnerships; better equip and afford NATO; deepen relations
with established defence industries; forge deep partnerships with new defence
sectors with leading companies in the field of artificial intelligence such as SparkCognition; and purposively equip NATO
for the future of war.

How will the Alliance adapt? NATO faces the same problem as the
poor American traveller in that corny, but nevertheless telling Irish joke
about if one wants to get to Dublin one would not start here. NATO will need to do something for which it
is politically, constitutionally and institutionally ill-suited; be radical. Indeed, as the Executive Summary of the report
states: “To lay the basis for long-term adaptation, NATO leaders should
commission a strategy review at the July 2018 Summit that could be completed by
the seventieth anniversary summit in 2019,and which might be embodied in a new Strategic Concept. NATO needs a forward-looking strategy that
sets out how NATO will meet the challenges of an unpredictable and
fast-changing world”.

Second, Rome, the Alliance and the future of nuclear deterrence. NATO is a defensive alliance, but it is also unashamedly
a nuclear alliance. Now, I know such language horrifies many people but nuclear
weapons are a vital part of the “appropriate mix” of defensive and deterrent
weapons the Alliance needs to maintain a credible Deterrence and Defence
Posture (DDPR). Back in 1967 when Pierre
Harmel and his team completed his seminal report The Future Tasks of the Alliance ‘deterrence’ was maintained by a
sufficiency of conventional and nuclear forces.
Today, new technology has rendered conceivable the rapid destruction by
an adversary of the critical functioning of an Alliance state or states via a
mix of disabling disinformation, crippling ‘de-organisation’, critical
infrastructure collapse and mass disruption, even before mass destruction is
unleashed. Holistic dismantling is
clearly the mix of offensive strategies Russia has adopted.

By way of credible deterrent response the Alliance will need new
ways to protect its people and its societies (resiliency) and ‘project’
deterrence. Indeed, deterrence without resiliency is impossible. That will, in
turn, need a new way of thinking about deterrence to enable it to reach across
the new coercion/escalation spectrum from hybrid war to hyper war via cyber
war, further underpinned by new critical relationships between civilian and
military expertise. Nuclear deterrence? Nuclear weapons exist to check-mate
nuclear weapons until the political conditions exist to enable their verifiable
eradication.

The message
from both Brussels and Rome? If NATO does not adapt to the dangerous but very
changed and rapidly changing strategic environment of the twenty-first century
NATO could fail. Unless as part of adaptation nuclear deterrence is modernised in
line with a new concept of deterrence that stretches across a resiliency,
conventional, unconventional, nuclear deterrence paradigm then the Alliance
itself could unwittingly lower the threshold for nuclear use as through our collective
weakness we inadvertently return to an implicit doctrine of Massive Retaliation.

One final
thing. At the start of my 2014 Oxford
Handbook of War (which is brilliant and very reasonably-priced) I quote
Plato. “Only the dead have seen the end of war”. Sadly, I fear the great man was right then
and is right today. You see NOTHING can be taken for granted in this brave new
world by NATO, our countries or even you and me. NATO is there to prevent war,
but only a properly adapted NATO can do that.

About Me

Julian Lindley-French is Senior Fellow of the Institute of Statecraft, Director of Europa Analytica & Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow, National Defense University, Washington DC. An internationally-recognised strategic analyst, advisor and author he was formerly Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy at the Netherlands Defence Academy,and Special Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Leiden. He is a Fellow of Respublica in London, and a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington.
Latest books: The Oxford Handbook on War 2014 (Paperback) (2014; 709 pages). (Oxford: Oxford University Press) & "Little Britain? Twenty-First Strategy for a Middling European Power". (www.amazon.com)
The Friendly-Clinch Health Warning: The views contained herein are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any institution.